Apparatuses with touch-sensitive display screens often provide a virtual key-board feature in the user interface to facilitate text input. This works by displaying a virtual keyboard, often resembling a real-life keyboard, on the display screen. By tapping with a writing tool on individual buttons or keys of the virtual keyboard, the user may input successive characters which aggregate to a text input shown in a text input field on the display screen.
Since text input with a writing tool on a touch-sensitive display screen by nature will be slower and more error prone than manual input on a hardware (physical) keyboard, it is generally desired to improve the accuracy and input speed. One approach in this regard known in the art is the provision of word completion functionality in the user interface for automatic presentation of full word candidates to what the user has currently inputted in the form of a partial word.
For instance, if the user writes “wo” by tapping on the “w” key and then the “o” key of the virtual keyboard, the word completion functionality can predict full word candidates such as “word”, “world” and “wormhole” and present them on the display screen in a selectable manner. A desired one of these candidates may be selected by the user by tapping on it, and the full word thus selected will automatically replace the current partial word input on the display screen.
While word completion functionality certainly has its benefits, some problems are associated therewith. In more particular, since the apparatus involved will typically be a small portable device such as a mobile terminal or a pocket computer, the available display screen space will be a limited resource. Thus, displaying multiple full word candidates anywhere in the user interface may potentially block other relevant information to be displayed (such as actual application contents).
Another problem with this input method is that the user is dependent on what words are in the dictionary of the device. Another problem is that the user constantly has to check what suggestions are provided to see if there is a matching word, whereby the user has to concentrate partly on finding the correct characters with the stylus and partly on checking suggested words, leading to inefficient typing. Moreover, this solution requires that dictionaries are stored locally in the device for all input languages that need to be supported, which requires a significant amount of storage space.
Consequently, there is a need for a novel and improved method for a user to efficiently input text on a device with a touch sensitive display.